Philippe Conticini

The XXL croissant that leads the case

The Croissant Gourmand XXL is the piece that travelled: an oversized, generously filled croissant that has become the signature of Philippe Conticini’s Paris pâtisserie on Place Dauphine. The Croissant XL aux amandes runs beside it as the almond version of the same outsized register, and the two together explain why viennoiseries and XXL are treated as one category here rather than as a sideline to the cakes.

Behind them the case turns composed. Tarte Framboise Bergamote pairs raspberry with bergamot, Fraisier holds the classic strawberry register, Le pur Vanille runs vanilla-led, and Le Nuage belongs to the lighter side of the same signature group. This is a chef-led maison rather than a general café, so the visit is built around pastry, laminated dough and composed desserts, not a plated meal.

A chef’s house, not a neighbourhood counter

Conticini put his own name over a business in 2018, after a career long enough to have changed French pastry from inside other people’s kitchens. He is credited with inventing the verrine in 1994, and his reputation rests on texture and on the order in which a dessert is tasted, which is why the composed pastries reward being eaten slowly rather than carried away.

The Place Dauphine room is small, polished and airy, with the oversized pastries doing the display work. Masterclasses run from the same house, presented as an immersion into the maison in an intimate setting in the middle of Paris, with themes ranging from the grands classiques to praliné. That teaching layer is part of what the counter is: a pastry house organised around technique and authorship as much as retail.

Start with the Croissant Gourmand XXL

Order the Croissant Gourmand XXL first if you want to understand the house quickly. It is the most direct entry into the large-format viennoiserie the maison is built on, and the Croissant XL aux amandes is the natural second if almond is the direction you want.

Then move to the composed side, where the names do the guiding. Tarte Framboise Bergamote points toward raspberry and bergamot, Fraisier toward strawberry and cream, Le pur Vanille toward a vanilla-led finish, and Le Nuage toward the lightest thing in the case. The pattern is simple and worth keeping: one laminated item, then one composed pastry from the named line.